The Tyger

“The Tyger” features two primary characters: the Tyger and its unnamed creator, whom Blake implies is God. The unnamed speaker of the poem plays an important role through his questions to the Tyger. But aside from his obvious concerns about the nature of creation, the poem sheds little light on who the speaker is. The Tyger, however, is described as a force of nature, burning in the night with fire in its eyes. Its stylization as “Tyger,” an archaic spelling of tiger rendered as a proper noun thanks to capitalization, both highlights the individuality of this particular tiger and allows it to stand for all the creatures of its species. By using the older spelling of tiger, Blake suggests that this tiger was the first one created by God. Other than the fire of its eyes, the only concrete descriptor of the Tyger is its “fearful symmetry...